Construction professionals generally use computer software programs to provide pricing for large construction projects. Some of these construction software programs include capabilities for drawing or uploading construction plans and/or engineering drawings. The software programs may enable a user to enter a list of building conditions that are required to be completed for a given construction project. The term building condition refers to each separate component of the construction project that needs to be built or installed. For example, the ceiling, exterior structure, doors, or a particular type of wall are all considered building conditions. In order to price a project correctly, an efficient method of calculating and tracking the quantities associated with each building condition may be needed. One way of achieving that is by creating live objects on a construction drawing for each building condition. As building conditions are entered, a user can create live objects on the construction drawings, where the live objects are linked to and represent particular building conditions. This process is sometimes referred to as takeoff. Once takeoff of building conditions is complete, the resulting software file would quantify building conditions and could be used to calculate a projected cost for the entire project and thus help create a bid for it. Such a file can also be used to track and manage the project once a bid is accepted and work on the project begins.
Accordingly, takeoff of building conditions in a construction project software program assists in automating unit and cost calculations and facilitates using such a program for keeping track of change and progress in the project. However, the process of takeoff itself can be very time consuming. That is because each area of a construction project requires completion of many different building conditions. For example, a bedroom needs a ceiling, electrical wiring, light fixtures, drywall, paint, flooring, a door, windows, and more. These building conditions need to be quantified individually and the process has to be repeated for each room or area of the construction project separately. In large construction projects involving many different building areas this means quantifying building conditions hundreds if not thousands of times. This can become a very time consuming and tedious process.
Thus, it would be desirable to implement a more efficient method for performing takeoff in a construction project software program.